Eaten Ch.20.2

Chapter 20.2: “Wu Heng, you’re so much like a snake”

The hiss of scales rasped against sand, its forked tongue flickering. The way it stared at him grew ever more ravenous.

Wu Heng angled his blade downward, his body utterly still—but in his eyes, black was giving way to a burning red.

The serpent finally halted its circling. With a violent lash of its tail, it lunged—the motion so fast it blurred from sight.

The wild stench of predator filled the air. Wu Heng twisted aside just as the gaping jaws snapped down, and at the same instant, he flung out a tendril, driving it straight toward the snake’s eyes.

The giant serpent lashed its tail and slipped free, but Wu Heng quickly extended his vines, coiling them tight around its neck. A force beyond imagination yanked him straight into the air and slammed him down hard on the snake’s body. As the massive creature thrashed side to side, Wu Heng didn’t hesitate—he raised his blade and drove it into the scaled flesh beneath him.

Crack!

The blade snapped clean in two.

Wu Heng tossed aside the broken hilt. From his back burst a storm of green tendrils, hissing through the air as they wrapped around the serpent’s body, intent on strangling it in half.

He could feel the armor of scales resisting—hard as iron. And he could feel, just as clearly, that the vines were already straining with everything they had.

The blood drained from Wu Heng’s face. A thin thread of red slid from the corner of his mouth—and then he caught the tang of blood rising from below, the serpent’s blood.

The meal was almost ready.

Wu Heng pressed his palm to the bleeding wound in the serpent’s hide. From his hand, supple vines slipped beneath the scales, curling like steel wire in a deadly loop—and then tightened, viciously.

But the mutant snake had no intention of letting him have his way. It recognized that Wu Heng was the true master of these meddling plants. With a violent surge, it whipped around and lunged, jaws wide.

“Gaa!”

From the treetop, the parrot dove down, wings beating furiously. It slashed at the serpent’s eyes with its claws again and again.

The mutant serpent’s tongue flicked out like a whip, coiling around X’s body. With a screech of pain, the bird was flung aside, bloody feathers drifting down from the sky.

The beast did not pause. Its head snapped back toward Wu Heng, jaws gaping, a snarl tearing through the air.

Wu Heng rolled across the ground, the vines severing from his body, withering, spent.

Hsssss.

The serpent glanced down at its bleeding body, shrieked, and coiled itself into the shape of a drawn bow—then, with the speed of lightning, launched straight for Wu Heng.

Wu Heng staggered up from the sandpit, barely steady on his feet when the mutant serpent’s furious eyes locked with his own. For the first time, he saw the inside of a serpent’s maw at such close range—the rows of flesh, the darkness, the cold stench of death.

That chill in the air only sharpened his focus. He lifted his hand, tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Time to eat.”

From his palm, green vines shot forth, plunging straight into the serpent’s gaping mouth. For a heartbeat, silence. Then came a piercing, drawn-out shriek.

Wu Heng already tasted blood on his tongue. With a low sigh, he pushed his hand forward an inch. The vines surged faster, deeper, carving through the beast from within.

Splurt. A tender green shoot punched out from the serpent’s tail.

The mutant snake convulsed violently, slamming its body against the ground, smashing everything within reach. Its soft white belly flashed upward.

Wu Heng’s eyes lit up. The serpent writhed harder, as if sensing its most vulnerable place was about to be torn open.

From within its body, the vines branched—slashing outward with sharp cracks. One after another, they pierced clean through the pale belly. In moments, the snake’s underbelly was laced with green, speckled with bright crimson seeping out from the punctures.

With a thunderous crash, the giant serpent collapsed. Its struggles ended for good.

The vines slid back out, dripping red, a single tendril bearing aloft a crimson energy core.

“A red core for snakes?” Wu Heng murmured, feeling the raw energy radiating from it.

He walked a few paces, picked up his discarded backpack, and tossed the core inside. Not far away, X lay sprawled on the ground.

The bird turned its head. In its blurred vision appeared Wu Heng’s flawless, unthreatening face.

Wu Heng didn’t reach for it. Instead, he asked, “Still want to run?”

X gave a weak cry and lifted its right foot, trembling.

A vine stretched out, curling around the parrot, lifting it gently, shaking the sand from its feathers.

Wu Heng, without looking back, strode toward the lifeless body of the mutant serpent.

He rolled up his sleeves and circled the mutant serpent once. Then he squatted down near the front of its belly, pressing his palm against the cold flesh as though searching for a particular spot.

His eyes flashed. The vines slipped in, and his hand followed, plunging straight into the snake’s abdomen. Moments later, he pulled out a heart.

The mutant serpent’s heart was far larger than that of any normal snake—like a grapefruit, swollen and heavy with moisture.

Wu Heng sank his teeth into it.

The boy switched to sitting cross-legged on the ground. He ate in a refined, reserved manner, but the bird and the vines beside him were nothing like that.

X was almost eating the mutant snake’s flesh with hatred. Its eyes were blood-red, and its sharp beak darted out to tear off a huge chunk of meat, swallowing it down in one gulp. After just a few bites, half of its body was smeared with the snake’s blood and fluids.

The vines were even rougher. It kept burrowing in and out of the snake’s body, feasting mainly on the organs and bones that Wu Heng found inconvenient to eat or simply disliked. Everything from a mutant beast was tastier than ordinary food and contained the energy it needed, so the vines didn’t let a single part go to waste.

As for the tender, fresh snake meat, that was left for Wu Heng himself to enjoy.

One snake heart had already left Wu Heng half full. He then sliced a few more chunks of meat with his blade, holding them in his hands to gnaw on. While eating, he said, “Next time, don’t go after prey way stronger than us. We can’t win.”

If not for his quick thinking just now, both he and the bird would have lost their lives here.

X gave its wings a flap, showing that it heard.

Wu Heng, for once, ate until he was stuffed. Looking at the leftover mutant snake meat, he felt a pang at the thought of leaving it behind. But if he were to take it… how?

The vines were already working hard, cutting up and stacking the remaining meat into neat piles, its diligence putting the belching bird lying on the ground at ease.

But when it came to packing the meat up, all three of them were stumped.

At that moment, the vine hooked itself around Wu Heng’s pinky. It burrowed into his palm and tapped at the stamen of the black poppy flower etched there.

Wu Heng lowered his head, staring at his palm, thoughtful.

After a brief pause, he turned his palm toward the heap of snake meat before him and softly commanded, “Store.”

In an instant, the meat vanished.

X leapt up with a flip, exclaiming, “Damn awesome!”

But before Wu Heng could even check whether the snake meat had truly been stored inside that little space of his, faint voices drifted to his ears. He glanced around instinctively, looking for somewhere to hide.

The boy slipped into the little sandcastle house.

—

The newcomers turned out to be several boys and one girl. Two of the boys were walking at the very front. As the distance closed, Wu Heng—peeking out just enough to see part of their faces—realized he knew them.

The two in front:

One was the class committee member, Xue Shen.

The other was the class monitor, Xie Chongyi.

As for the ones behind, Wu Heng couldn’t remember their faces. But since they were all wearing the school uniform of Hanzhou No.1 High, they must be classmates too.

In fact, Wu Heng didn’t really remember Xue Shen’s face either. He just knew there was always a boy with glasses following around Xie Chongyi.

But what were they doing here?

Weren’t they supposed to be at school?

Xue Shen came to a stop when they reached the kindergarten playground. He surveyed the surroundings, then frowned. “That surge of energy is gone.”

“How could it be? It was here just a moment ago. Let me sense it again.” The girl, Dou Lu, crouched down, pressed her palm against the ground, and closed her eyes to feel for the nearby energy field.

“Can you even do this?” Du Yaoyuan rubbed his messy yellow hair in frustration.

“Quit your damn nagging. If you’re so good, you do it!” Dou Lu shot back impatiently.

Several more minutes passed. Then Dou Lu opened her eyes, shock written all over her face as she looked at Xie Chongyi. “Monitor… the magnetic field—it’s gone.”

A brief silence followed.

Then Du Yaoyuan erupted on the spot, roaring, “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck! I knew you were full of shit! Who the hell wakes up in the middle of the night and suddenly awakens powers, huh? And claims to sense some energy field? You’ve just dragged us out here for nothing! Fine, it’s whatever for the monitor and them, but us? We’ve only got our fists and a single life! Do you even realize how much risk we took coming here?”

Faced with Du Yaoyuan’s accusations, Dou Lu refused to back down.

“Quit throwing your damn ‘f*ck this, f*ck that’ in front of me—who the hell are you cursing at? If you’re so damn capable, then figure out a way to awaken your powers yourself, and stop counting on the class monitor! How was this trip for nothing? You act like if you didn’t come, you wouldn’t have to leave school. What, you planning to survive on thin air if you stay locked up in there?”

He Suyu’s head throbbed like a drum. He squeezed himself between the two of them. “Enough already, can you not argue? Don’t you ever get tired of fighting every single day?”

“Get lost!” Dou Lu and Du Yaoyuan snapped in unison.

Furious, Dou Lu wasn’t about to admit defeat. She threw herself flat on the ground, practically prostrating, to sense again.

This time, her perception came much faster than before. She scrambled up, face alight with joy, not even bothering to dust off the dirt on her clothes. “I’ve sensed the energy field again!”

“But… it’s way weaker than the one I felt this morning. I thought it was some large mutant beast, but now it feels like it’s shrunk—more like a monkey, or a cat.”

“Mutant animals can get bigger and smaller?” He Suyu asked curiously.

“Dou Lu’s sensing the energy field,” explained Xie Chongyi. He squatted down, resting his chin on his palms, speaking lazily. “The strength of the energy isn’t directly tied to body size. So what Dou Lu means is, the intensity of the energy field has gone from something like a small elephant to something like a cat. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

Dou Lu nodded repeatedly.

“Then it’s still a waste of time. What good is a cat’s worth of energy?” Du Yaoyuan grumbled.

Wu Heng withdrew his gaze and lowered his eyes to the parrot resting on his leg. “The energy field they sensed must be coming from you.”

X lifted its left foot.

“…” Wu Heng figured it was out of pride. For X to admit that this group was talking about it would be no different from admitting it was weaker than that mutant snake.

Though the fact was true—that X was weaker than the snake—most humans could hardly bring themselves to admit such things. And a bird with awakened intelligence was no exception.

“So many footprints here!” Du Yaoyuan, who had been wandering around, came to the spot where Wu Heng had just fought the mutant snake.

The others came over when they heard him.

And it wasn’t just footprints on the ground—there were also drops of blood, damp stains, and all sorts of chaotic marks…

Xie Chongyi stepped forward, and the others instinctively gave him the center position. He took it with ease, surveying the area before letting out a soft laugh. “Looks like someone else snatched our prey first.”

Xue Shen glanced at the traces beside him. “These are battle marks.”

Staring at the wide swath of wreckage, Du Yaoyuan couldn’t help but take a step back. “It was fought out this badly?”

Back when they left school, Xie Chongyi had already warned them that based on Dou Lu’s sensed energy field, he couldn’t guarantee everyone’s safety.

In their eyes, Xie Chongyi was already the strongest among them. He could foresee disasters and prepare supplies in advance, knew about the existence of energy cores in zombies and mutant flora and fauna, and—most importantly—Xie Chongyi was an ability user.

But even someone like him had admitted this might be tricky—yet the unknown giant beast in the kindergarten had already been taken down by some unknown party?

“I finally understand how my grandma feels when she can’t figure out a smartphone,” He Suyu sighed.

“Same here,” Du Yaoyuan agreed for once, dropping his usual snark.

Dou Lu spread her hands. “Isn’t this world changing a bit too fast? It hasn’t even been a week.”

Then she glanced at Du Yaoyuan with a cold sneer. “Ordinary people must be miserable in a world like this.”

Seeing that another quarrel was about to start, He Suyu quickly stepped forward. “Since the target’s gone, Dou Lu, could you check if there are any other mutant creatures nearby? Sorry to trouble you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dou Lu replied. She placed her palm against the ground—but before she could adjust her breath to sense, a sudden wave of dizziness hit her.

Xue Shen reacted quickly, catching her before she fell.

Xie Chongyi cast a light glance over. “Overusing abilities. That’s enough. Let’s head back and rest for today.”

When Xie Chongyi spoke, there was a subtle kind of pressure in his voice. It was so well-hidden that if someone weren’t sensitive enough, they might mistake it for casual conversation.

But Wu Heng had always been sharp. Sitting inside the little castle, he could tell that Xie Chongyi wasn’t in a good mood.

A prey that had been almost in his grasp was snatched away by someone else. Of course he wasn’t happy.

And since he wasn’t happy, Wu Heng was.

The group had no choice but to leave the kindergarten. From inside the castle, Wu Heng watched their retreating figures. Among them, Xie Chongyi stood out immediately. He carried a kind of noble ease, the aura of someone who had never suffered hardship and therefore regarded everything in the world with indifference. Even in this hellish apocalypse, he seemed unruffled, at ease, and self-possessed.

Only long after the voices faded did Wu Heng crawl out of the castle. He clutched the wall with both hands and slid down the slide into the sand.

Sitting there blankly, he wondered what he should hunt next for food.

“Wu Heng.”

Time seemed to stretch. Wu Heng stiffly turned his head—only to see Xie Chongyi strolling casually out from behind the castle.

The boy’s peach-blossom eyes were dark, carrying a smile that wasn’t really a smile, with far more coldness than warmth. The pressure of it made Wu Heng unable to lift his head.

The youth tried to push himself up with his palm against the sand, but the fine, soft grains swallowed his hand and half his arm. He couldn’t get up—could only watch helplessly as Xie Chongyi came to stand before him.

Xie Chongyi crouched down, taking his time to study the boy who looked as skittish as a startled bird.

“Didn’t you just… leave?” Wu Heng’s heart was pounding wildly. He felt like Xie Chongyi held too many secrets—but the more there were, the more intoxicating they seemed.

“I did leave,” Xie Chongyi nodded, his expression playful. “But who told you there’s only one of me?”

Wu Heng deeply felt that Xie Chongyi was wrapped in layer after layer of disguises, like an onion that could never be fully peeled. He asked, “Split body—your ability?”

No answer came. As the boy struggled to sit up, Xie Chongyi slowly raised his hand, index and middle finger pressed together, and lightly pressed downward.

Though his body was never touched, Wu Heng’s shoulders suddenly felt a crushing weight—he was forced back down into the sand with a heavy thud.

A storm surged inside him, yet outwardly his face showed nothing but simple bewilderment and helplessness. “Monitor…”

Casually, Xie Chongyi asked, “The thing that was here—did you take it?”

Wu Heng blinked blankly. “What thing?”

Xie Chongyi’s smile faded a notch. “At a time like this, you show up at a kindergarten—don’t tell me you came here just to go down the slide. Or maybe… to play in the sand?”

Wu Heng picked at his fingers. He thought this reasoning actually sounded pretty decent, so he nodded.

“Which is it? The slide, or the sand?” There was no trace of a smile left in Xie Chongyi’s eyes, yet his tone was mocking, deceptively playful.

Wu Heng randomly chose one. “The slide.”

“…”

Xie Chongyi lifted his hand, as if to pinch Wu Heng’s cheek—or maybe his chin—but before he could, a hissing sound came from behind him.

Not far away, a mass of young snakes was slithering toward them like a black tide. Their eyes glowed scarlet, their speed was fast, and each was several times larger than an ordinary snake hatchling—each one as thick as an adult’s arm, the size of a python by the old world’s standards.

Watching the unnerving scene, Wu Heng clenched his fists, unsure whether to make a move.

Since he showed no intent to fight, the poppy inside him naturally stayed quiet as well.

When Xie Chongyi turned his head, one of the snakes lunged to bite him. He gave a casual flick of his hand, and the nearest snake’s head burst open on the spot. As the blood sprayed, he tilted his head slightly aside, though a few drops still splattered across his face.

The sensation of blood sliding down his face cracked the calm, unruffled mask on Xie Chongyi. He twitched his fingers, and in an instant the pack of snakes had their heads blown apart, flesh and gore splattering across the ground. The cold stench of blood grew thick in the air.

The scene before him was savage and brutal, yet Xie Chongyi didn’t even blink. He turned back again, continuing to speak with Wu Heng.

“These snakes just hatched. Which means there must’ve been a female here. Wu Heng, you’re the one who killed her. You took their mother away from them.”

?

For the first time, Wu Heng felt the urge to slap someone.

But he merely lowered his lashes and murmured, “I’m afraid of snakes.”

And then denied it again.

Xie Chongyi tilted Wu Heng’s face up. His palm was warm, his fingers long and pale, easily supporting Wu Heng’s face with one hand.

His thumb rubbed across Wu Heng’s cheek, lifting away a crust of dried snake blood. He saw it, but ignored it. Instead, he sighed softly in a gentle, harmless tone:

“Wu Heng, you’re so much like a snake. How could you still be afraid of them?”

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